Advances in Methanol Production from Biomass

 Dear Colleagues,

One of the biggest challenges today is to realize new chemical processes that are sustainable both from an economic and environmental point of view for the production of basic materials starting from renewable resources. Biomass utilization to produce chemicals and energy vectors represents the most appealing way to reduce the use of fossil resources and decrease pollution and the green-house effect.

In particular, methanol is a key compound as a building block in chemical industry, as an energy vector, and as fuel. Traditional fossil raw materials, natural gas, and coal are nowadays the most used raw materials for the synthesis of this highly valuable compound.

Intensive research in academia and industry is devoted to the application of renewable biomass-based sources for methanol production. Methanol synthesis is a well-consolidated technology, but important improvements concerning new catalysts, new process configurations, new reactors, and new ideas are urgently required to solve all the practical problems arising from the use of biomass instead of fossil sources. The final cost of bio-methanol is, nowadays, not competitive with methanol produced from fossil sources.

In this context, we are pleased to announce an upcoming Special Issue entitled “Advances in Methanol Production from Biomass”. It our pleasure to invite you and members of your research team to submit original research or review papers for this Special Issue.

Potential topics for this Special Issue include, but are not restricted to, the following:

• Innovative catalysts for methanol production
• New synthetic procedures for catalysts synthesis
• Kinetics and thermodynamic analysis involving biomass gasification and methanol production
• Experimental data regarding methanol synthesis in the presence of CO₂ and/or other impurities
• Automatic control of water and wastewater treatment processes for nitrogen and/phosphorus
• Economic analysis of methanol-from-biomass production, or of a specific, related unit operation
• A Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) study concerning methanol production using traditional and innovative raw materials
• Strategy for improving the sustainability of biomass transformation into methanol

Prof. Carlo Pirola
Dr. Federico Galli
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Applied Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• methanol from biomass
• catalysis and kinetics
• process design and simulation
• LCA
• carbon dioxide